After operations on sites used for mines, pipelines, wellsites, gravel pits, borrow pits, landfills, and other disturbances, it is necessary to reclaim the land.
This generally involves establishing plants like those grown in similar ecosystems, such as forest ecosystems in the oilsands and native grass land ecosystems on pipelines, wellsites, etc. on the prairie. Presently, such “transplanting” is typically accomplished by salvaging the soil surface (15 to 20 cm), transporting it and spreading it on the reclaimed land surface. It takes about 1 ha of salvage to reclaim 1 ha of land. Alternatively, a diversity of targeted understory species can be established by collecting seeds, growing them in a nursery, and planting them on the reclaimed landscape. While these methods work reasonably well they are time consuming and expensive. The salvage operation is destructive in that an area can only be scraped once then all the seed stock and propagules are removed. Seed collection through to propagation and planting is very time consuming, labor intensive, and expensive.